Social Marketing

Some Determinants that Influence Behaviors
External Determinants
The forces outside the individual that
affect his or her performance of a
behavior.
Skills: the set of abilities necessary to
perform a particular behavior.
Access: encompasses the existence of
services and products, such as helmets
and safety seats, their availability to
an audience and an audience’s comfort
in accessing desired types of products
or using a service.
Policy: laws and regulations that affect
behaviors and access to products and
services. Policies affecting traffic safety
include child seat laws, seat belt laws,
and driving under the influence.
Culture: the set of history, customs,
lifestyles, values and practices within a
self-defined group. May be associated
with ethnicity or with lifestyle, such as
“rural” or “youth” culture.
Actual consequences: what actually
happens after performing a particular
behavior.
Internal Determinants
The forces inside an individual’s head that
affect how he or she thinks or feels about
a behavior.
Knowledge: basic factual knowledge
about traffic safety, how to protect oneself
from injury, where to get services, etc.
Attitudes: a wide-ranging category for what
an individual thinks or feels about a variety
of issues. This over-arching category would
include self-efficacy, perceived risk, and
other attitudinal factors.
Self-efficacy: an individual’s belief that he
or she can do a particular behavior.
Perceived social norms: the perception
that people important to an individual think
that she or he should do the behavior.
Norms have two parts 1) who matters most
to the person on a particular issue, and
2) what she or he perceives those people
think she or he should do.
Perceived consequences: what a person
thinks will happen, either positive or negative,
as a result of performing a behavior
Perceived risk: a person’s perception of
how vulnerable they feel (to crashes, etc).
Intentions: what an individual plans or
projects she or he will do in the future;
commitment to a future act. Future
intention to perform a behavior is highly
associated with actually performing
that behavior.